Elizabeth Smart Tells 'Today' Kidnapper Not Part of Her Life

The man who stole Elizabeth Smart from her bedroom at knifepoint, then raped and hurt her for months, “no longer has any part of my life,” she said during a "Today" interview.

Confronting him in the courtroom helped her achieve that psychological release, she told "Today" host Savannah Guthrie. Smart has been talking about her ordeal, promoting her book “My Story,” which came out this week.

Beginning with a night she described as “the scariest” in her life when she was kidnapped as a naive 14-year-old, Smart confronted what happened to her and the process that took place to help her recover.

Seeing her kidnapper Brian David Mitchell, who is serving two life sentences for what he did to Smart, in court made her realize that he could “never control me ever again or make me feel bad ever again, that he no longer exists in my life, and I never have to let him,” Smart told Guthrie.

Calling herself “broken beyond repair,” Smart said music and her family helped her to come back to herself after her rescue.

“Healing takes a lot of different forms, and it’s different for everybody. There’s not a wrong way, there’s not a right way. And for me, I’ve had a lot of different therapies,” she said in the interview.

“My mom said, ‘Elizabeth, what this man has done to you is terrible, and there aren’t words to describe how wicked and evil he is … but the best punishment you could ever give him is to be happy,” she said. “Move forward and follow your dreams and do exactly what you want to do.”

The difficulty of telling her story and the bravery it takes to put herself out there has made Smart a popular topic on social media, with people commenting on and also retweeting the stories she’s sharing in the media:

Elizabeth Smart http://t.co/tp2BGK9vcy The bravest thing this extraordinary woman has done is to share her story to help others.